Hettie of Hope Street (23 page)

By rights he should have been smiling not frowning. Only three days ago Alfred had told everyone that, thanks to John, they now had so many new members joining the flying club that they had decided to employ another teacher – and that, from now on, John was not just to be their senior pilot but also the overall manager of the club itself. Alfred had added that John was to receive an increase in pay, and that he would be provided with an assistant to take over the more mundane clerical duties for which he was currently responsible.

‘We can't praise you enough, John, for all that you have done here,' Alfred had told him enthusiastically. ‘Fact is, old chap, that I've even had someone from the Air Force itself ask me if we
could train up some of their young pilots for them. Seems like they do not have enough instructors themselves, and of course we're pretty close to their base here.'

Oh yes, he had every reason not to be frowning, John admitted. But it wasn't his work that was causing him angst.

Polly had arrived at the airfield earlier in the day, as usual driving in far too fast, leaving her roadster carelessly parked outside the clubhouse whilst she rushed into John's office, insisting that she had to see him.

All too aware of exactly what the smirks the group of young men who had witnessed her arrival and her demand to see him meant, John had determinedly escorted her back outside, saying clearly as he did so, ‘Lady Polly, how kind of you. His Grace said he would ask you to drop those papers off for him.'

‘What on earth are you talking about, John?' Polly had asked as soon as they were outside. ‘And why are you calling Alfred His Grace?'

‘It isn't fitting that you behave so informally towards me,' he told her quietly. ‘It's bound to cause gossip.'

He didn't want to put his concern to her any more bluntly, because he did not want to upset her.

‘Gossip?' Polly had shrugged indifferently. ‘Pooh, who cares about that! John, I've had the most wonderful idea,' she told him, her eyes
sparkling. ‘I want you to fly me to the South of France for Easter. There's this wonderful hotel there, you will love it, and…'

John had felt his heart sink as he listened to her. She was constantly coming up with madcap schemes and ideas, but none of them had been as impractical and impossible as this. He had started to shake his head but she immediately stopped him, telling him determinedly, ‘You can't say no John, because I have already booked the hotel!'

‘What you're suggesting is impossible,' John had told her quietly.

The excitement in her eyes had been replaced by the sheen of tears. ‘
Why
is it impossible? And if you say it's because of some silly social…'

‘It's impossible because I have already arranged to spend Easter with my sister,' John had cut in firmly.

‘Your sister…But…'

‘She hasn't been well, and I am very anxious to see her,' John had continued, steeling himself against the disappointment and despair he knew he would see in Polly's eyes.

‘But John, I've got it all planned and…and I need you.'

‘Your brother has already agreed that I may take several days off over Easter,' John had added, as though he hadn't heard her plea and as though too he considered her emotional request nothing more than her desire to make use of him as an employee of her brother. ‘I shall ask around, if
you wish, and see if there is a qualified pilot available who could…'

‘Don't bother,' Polly had shouted fiercely to him before turning and running to her car.

The truth was that Polly was making it increasingly plain that she wanted to be close to him. She didn't love him, John suspected, but she did desperately need a confidant and a companion. And if things had been different, if there were not such a huge social gulf between them, he knew that he would have wanted to help her. And been tempted to turn their friendship into something more intimate?

It was not proper that he should have such thoughts, John told himself robustly as he left his office and closed the door.

Everyone else had gone home for the day now. It was gone six o'clock and growing dark. He had some letters he wanted to write and some articles on photography he wanted to read. They had been sent to him by his old employer and friend, and, although he did not have as much time for it as he would have liked, John still had a keen interest in photography.

The clubhouse was empty. One of the other things Alfred had mentioned to him was a request from certain club members that the clubhouse be opened in the evening, a bar installed, and a bar steward employed, in order that those members who wished to do so could meet together socially.

‘That might lead to some of them drinking
before they fly,' John had warned him. ‘And that is something I will not countenance.'

He could see a motor coming towards the clubhouse and his heart lurched as he recognised Polly's roadster for the second time that day.

She was again driving far too fast, and he had to step back to avoid the pall of dust thrown up by the wheels as she brought the roadster to a halt. The light from the building revealed that the motor's normally shiny red bodywork was filmed with dust. When Polly got out of the car he could see that she had been crying. She ran straight to him, flinging herself against him so that he had no option other than to take her in his arms.

‘Oh John, I am so glad that you are still here. I am sorry I was horrid before. Will you forgive me?'

‘There isn't anything to forgive,' he assured her.

‘Oh John.' Her voice was muffled and he could feel the warmth of her breath seeping through his shirt to his flesh. ‘I had to come back. I have to talk to you…Can we go to your quarters?'

He should really send her away. He knew that. But as she lifted her head to look at him he could smell the gin on her breath and feel the anxious tremble of her body. She lived too recklessly for someone so desperately fragile.

‘We can talk, Polly, but I warn you I cannot and will not change my mind about Easter. My sister has been very ill.' He didn't want her to think he was simply making excuses. He paused
and then said quietly, ‘There was to have been a child, but unfortunately it was not to be and she took it very hard…Polly, what is it?' he begged her as she lifted her hand to her mouth and began to sob uncontrollably.

‘John, John, have you ever done something that you hate yourself for? Something so dreadful and so wrong that you can hardly bear to live with yourself?'

John guided her into the building and towards the door to his private quarters, remembering as he did so the last time Polly had asked him this question, at Moreton Place, at the New Year's party. ‘Let's go upstairs and I'll make you a cup of tea,' he told her comfortingly.

‘Tea? Don't you have any gin?' she asked him. ‘When I feel like this, when I feel so cold inside that nothing can take away the dreadful icy burn of that coldness, gin is the only thing that can warm me.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't have any,' John told her as he ushered her up the stairs.

‘This room looks like a monk's cell, John,' she complained as he took her into the small parlour. ‘Do you wish you had been a monk? Is that why you live like one, without a woman in your life and your bed?'

It was the gin making her talk so wildly, and so improperly, John recognised as she dropped into one of the chairs and lay back, her face so pale it looked almost blue-white.

As he kneeled down to light the gas fire, John thought that Polly looked thinner and more fine boned every time he saw her, as though something inside her was burning her away.

‘I'll go and make that tea.'

‘No!' She reached out and grasped his hand with her own. ‘No, John, stay here with me, please. There's something I want to tell you. I have to tell
someone
before I go mad, because the pain of it
is
driving me mad. It never lets go of me; it's there all the time, night and day, and I can't escape from it no matter how hard I try. It was my fault that Ollie died. God took him away from me to punish me because of the dreadful thing I did…'

The wildness of her words was beginning to alarm him, John admitted to himself as he sat down in the chair next to her own.

‘Promise me you won't hate me because of what I'm going to tell you? she begged him.

‘I promise you,' John assured her quietly, holding both her hands in his own.

Without looking at him, she began, ‘You know how much I loved Ollie and he loved me too?'

She was going to tell him that she felt she had betrayed Oliver because she wanted to love again, John decided.

‘We were so young and so very happy, and we thought…' Polly plunged on. ‘Please don't be shocked, John, but…' She raised her head and looked at him. ‘I…I gave myself to Ollie. It was my idea. I wanted to do it. He tried to dissuade
me.' There was laughter in her eyes as well as tears. ‘But I was very determined and he loved me very much. You know, when you're a girl and you don't know anything, other girls tell you that your first time will hurt, but it wasn't like that with us. It was wonderful, and perfect, and I thought I had found heaven.'

Her voice trembled. ‘I wanted us to be married straight away, but then Ollie told me that he had volunteered. I was so upset, so angry with him, and so afraid for him. But he said it was his duty and he had to do it. There was not going to be time to arrange a wedding, but he said that the war would soon be over and that we would be married then.

‘They sent him to a training camp and it was whilst he was there that it…' She hesitated and then started to tremble, and a dreadful certainty seized John.

‘I realised that I was to have a child. I could not believe it at first. I did not want to believe it. All the men were given a twenty-four-hour pass at the end of their training. I told Ollie straight away. He was as shocked as I was. He told me, he wanted me…His family were so very strict and old-fashioned, and my own circumstances…

‘We did not know how long the war would last. It was unthinkable that I should have a child outside marriage, we both knew that. I was dreadfully upset but Ollie told me that there would be other children. I knew…there was a woman I
had met socially…There had been, talk. We both agreed that it had to be and that it was for the best. Ollie gave me the money and I went to see her.

‘At first she pretended she didn't know what I wanted, but in the end she gave me his name. The doctor, I mean. I went to see him.

‘It was horrid, John. Dreadful. This cold, cruel room, and this man with his icy eyes and cold hands. He gave me chloroform and it made me feel so dreadfully sick. I can still remember…' Her voice tailed away and she started to tremble violently.

‘When I came round it was all over. I went home. The doctor had told me that I must stay in bed for three days. It was on the third day that the telegram came saying that Ollie had been killed. I had killed our baby and God had killed Ollie to punish me for my sin. I'd lost them both. My dearest love and the child that could have been my solace.'

She was sobbing wildly now and John managed to master his own shocked disbelief to try to comfort her.

He knew such things happened – but not to girls like Polly. Poor, down-trodden women with too many children visited back-street abortionists, as they were called, seeking illegal terminations of their unwanted pregnancies. And sometimes, too, frightened unmarried girls. But to deliberately end a pregnancy was against the law. Both in man's
eyes as well as God's. And both the woman and her abortionist ran the risk of being prosecuted for manslaughter. It had never occurred to John that a decent young woman, never mind one of Polly's elevated social position, would seek such a remedy.

Was this the reason for her drinking and her wild behaviour? It made sense to him that it must be, especially with such a terrible secret haunting her. He tried to put himself in her lover's position and to imagine himself asking the woman he loved to take the life of his child, but his imagination simply could not take him that far. And yet he could well understand the circumstances which had driven them both to seek such a drastic remedy.

‘I am cursed, John. I am cursed for ever. I am haunted by the cries of my lost child and by my own longing to have that child back. But it is too late. Too late.'

‘Ivan said you wanted to see me?'

Although she herself wasn't aware of it, the fact that Hettie now felt so comfortable using their director's first name revealed the speed with which she had matured since she had come to London.

‘Yes.' Jay agreed, getting up from his desk and smiling at her. ‘I've heard from Archie, and he says that he already has several ideas for a new musical.'

Jay had sent Archie to New York with the
instruction that he wanted the composer to study what was happening on Broadway and to incorporate the best and biggest box-office draws in the musical he wanted him to write.

‘My prediction is that by this time next year you will be starring in your own musical, Hettie. Now what do you think of that?' Jay enquired jovially.

Hettie gasped and coloured up, her eyes shining as she shook her head and protested, ‘So soon? I know you did say, but I hadn't expected anything like this yet.'

‘I'm not a man to let the grass grow under my feet, Hettie,' Jay told her.

Nor was he one to risk another man snatching so tempting a morsel as Hettie from out of his hand, Jay acknowledged inwardly. And Hettie
was
tempting. Deliciously and delightfully so.

‘So I can take it that the thought of us continuing our partnership pleases you then, can I?' Jay teased her, walking up to her and sliding one arm round her waist, and then, before she could move, bending his head to kiss her very firmly and deliberately on the mouth.

It wasn't the first time Jay had kissed her, and it wasn't the first time either that the intimacy of his behaviour towards her had left her feeling both dizzily happy and at the same time horribly guilty. Jay was a married man after all. But whenever, in the aftermath of such intimacy, she resolved to reprove him for his familiarity towards her the next time she saw him, he always behaved in such
a professional manner that she could not legitimately do so. In fact, she was often left thinking that maybe she had been overreacting.